EF1 tornado, Center, Kentucky, March 27, 2017

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF1

Date

March 27, 2017

Touchdown

5:05 PM CDT (22:05 UTC)

Lifted

5:06 PM CDT (22:06 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$300,000

County

Metcalfe County

Touchdown point

37.137, -85.699

Lift-off point

37.139, -85.694

Record number

1703271605-01

14 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LMK, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• Large barn destroyed. Only partial side wall remaining. Open cover on SW side.
• Porch raised and supports fell out; window broken on lee side of house
• View of debris field of 4 buildings, looking ENE.
• One of several vehicles hit by debris. This truck was also turned 90 degrees when it blew onto the road

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A strong area of low pressure tracked across the lower Ohio Valley during the afternoon and evening hours on March 27. Combined with warm and unstable air, scattered severe storms developed across central Kentucky. An organized line of convection brought sporadic damaging winds and large hail to portions of central Kentucky. There was also one brief tornado in Center, Kentucky in Metcalfe County.

This squall-line tornado was on the ground for just over a quarter of a mile, but caused considerable destruction. It touched down about 0.3 miles southwest of Center, destroying two large barns and a small outbuilding in addition to taking the roof off a small home. The front porch of a nearby home was briefly raised, causing the supports to fall out. The tornado moved northeast, streaming debris from the four buildings in a cyclonic pattern and into a nearby automotive repair shop that had one door blown in and another outward. The large metal shop had minor roof damage, but was pierced in several locations by debris from the outbuildings to the southwest and the entire facility was shifted slightly off its foundation. Numerous vehicles near the repair shop sustained damage when hit by large debris from the barns to the southwest. The cab of a small pickup was crushed by debris and the vehicle blown onto Highway 969. An RV parked next to the shop was blown into a utility pole. Several other vehicles had windows broken out. Metal roof panels from the destroyed buildings, along with insulation from the small home, was wrapped around trees as far as a half mile from their origin, with other small debris observed as far as 3/4 mile from the initial touchdown location.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 19:27 UTC and running to 23:26 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:07 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Louisville radar (KLVX), 96 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:04 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2017 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

5 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.